Jonesing for Jesus [VIDEO]

Full Transcript:

I want to start by briefly introducing myself. You’re already seeing up there the sermon title is:

Jonesing for Jesus, Turning our Sin Addiction into a God Addiction

That’s where my passion is.

A little bit about me. I am Vin—Vin McReynolds. I grew up in Flagstaff. I am half Vietnamese and I am half Irish. My father was in the Vietnam War. He met my mother there, came back in the early seventies. I have two brothers before me. I am the last of three.

My father, awesome guy taught me to do well in life, taught me to behave myself,  taught me to be a man.  Amazing guy. Never ever taught me to do anything wrong. Never taught me to steal, never taught me to cheat, never taught me to do drugs. He raised me right.

 Yet, as I grew up, I was bad.

My mother, amazing lady. She comes up to about my shoulder. She’s a Vietnamese lady. Strongest lady I know. I greatly admire her. When I, I introduce who I am, I love to talk about my mother. My mother shaped me. Never ever taught me to do anything wrong.

Yet, as I grew up, I was bad.

After work, I would go with everybody at work and would do drugs and I would drink and my daughter at the time. She was, uh,….I…. Want to say three, four years old. She would wait up till two in the morning. And she would greet me when I came home and I would be inebriated or high on something.

And I just couldn’t stand my life.

And I cried out to God. I was like, God, I got to change.

My wife and me were fighting like cats and dogs. We weren’t getting along. …., my marriage was in a shambles. I was almost, … I’m sure we would have been divorced in no time. So, … just to make short of my testimony story, how I came to be who I am. I asked God for a sign and he showed me one.

 It was a moving sign. It was a deeply personal sign, and it made me want to change.

 It affected my heart, and it made me want to have a new identity, a new identity in Christ.

“When two or more people gather in my name…” [Mat 18:20]

…There is the church.

We have these little churches every Friday night, just in that building down there.

We talk about Jesus. We don’t talk about how I can fix you, because I can’t. We talk about how Jesus can give you freedom from your hurts and your habits and your hangups.

 It’s a Celebrate Recovery class. …, I’ll throw in some personal anecdotes and things that happen to me throughout the week. You’ll come to know me over time. …, it’s an amazing thing.

 It’s different than church where you guys are sitting here and you’re looking at me and I’m just lecturing, we interact, we have a large group. And then later on, we break into small groups and we get deeply personal.

 We need to be real.

 We need to have conversations about the struggles we have. We can’t say everything’s all good because it’s not. The thing I hate the most in church is saying, How are you? And you tell me I am fine. And maybe someone who overheard you might know your business. They might be like, No, he’s breaking up with his wife.

No, his kids hate him. No, he’s struggling with drugs. I could be the clerk at the convenience store. I was like, You can’t be doing fine. You just bought a suitcase of beer last night. You know, I mean, but at church, I’m doing fine. I’m good. I’m good. We’re not good. We can’t pretend we’re good. We gotta be real.

That’s why I like those guys down there. Celebrate Recovery. What are we celebrating? Our lives are broken. We have struggles. We, we, we, we just don’t know left from right. We don’t know up from down and we’re gathering together. We’re eating some food. We’re having fellowship with one another. What are we celebrating?

That’s what we’re celebrating. The togetherness, the fellowship, the relationships that we build with one another, because this guy is going to call me out and this guy is going to call me out.

 We try to figure out what sin nature is doing to our lives, what sin nature is doing to tear us apart. And why do we even have it? So that’s what I’m talking about today.

 It’s the things that we have our identity in when we talk about who we are. So often today I see people that say, you know, I am this or I am that. And sometimes it has to do with gender. Sometimes it has to do with their profession. Sometimes it has to do with being a father, being a spouse. It’s what you identify with. It’s who you are.

 Well, if we can find our identity in Christ, a lot of our problems, I believe will disappear.

 Think about this question:

 Who is the master and who is the slave?

 In Romans 7:15, Paul says, for I do not understand my own actions for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. So basically, if you’re asking yourself who’s the master and who’s the slave, you’re asking yourself, “Who is saying jump?” And who is saying, “How high?”

Okay?

 So, …, when I started being a, Believer in Christ, when I started becoming a Christ follower, I decided that Jesus Christ was going to be my master. But what does that mean today? Sometimes it has negative connotations of slavery and stuff like that. I am talking about slavery, but the slavery of one that we choose for ourselves, that we gladly serve someone who is above us, who has all the power above us, but rightfully so.

Because this person has our best interests in mind.  Without this person watching over us, we will be a disaster. We will fall so far. We won’t know how to get back up.

 That’s why classes like Celebrate Recovery exist to reintroduce ourselves to our creator, to reintroduce ourselves to the one who can give us freedom from those hurts and those habits and those hangups.

 So in Proverbs 25:4 it says, That, ………… take away the dross from silver and the Smith has material for a vessel, but we all want to refine who we are to make ourselves into better versions of who we are.

 And there’s this stuff inside of metal. It’s called dross. And that’s the, …, the yucky impurities that, …, we need to remove from the metal in order to make it into something like a pure silver or a pure gold.

 We want to get rid of the dross, all of the negative impurities in our life. And so, …, refining is the process of making pure what is not pure, …, but what does that really look like?

 Well, I think it’s actually doing what God wants for us instead of what we want for us. It’s being less selfish in our lives.

 It’s trying to ask God, what do you want for me? Instead of, God, give me this, give me this, give me this, if I even claim to believe in God.

 So…. Smoking cigarettes? 25 years I was smoking a cigarette, you know, and I used to think, Hey, you know, I’m smoking cigarettes because it reduces my anxiety.

 Well, if you believe in the Bible, 1 Cor 6:19 talks about respecting our bodies. Your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit within you. The Holy Spirit dwells within you.

You don’t want to have this smoky dwelling for the spirit, you know, and you don’t want it to smell like a bar after you’ve been drinking cigarettes and, and, and alcohol and the Holy Spirit’s living in you, it’s just kind of a messy situation there, but let’s say you’re not, you know, going into a Bible verse.

So let’s just imagine that…, “studies have shown” that smoking increases anxiety.

 So the thing I was using to reduce my anxiety and smoking a cigarette was actually increasing all of those anxieties in my life. It was making things worse. So what did I know? I knew nothing. So when I rely upon my own desires and what I want for myself, I start realizing that I am wrong.

I don’t know what’s right. God does. And if I place my trust in him, if I lean on God and his understanding for what is, is going to be a meaningful, bright. ….AMAZING future with, … two beautiful daughters and an AMAZING wife and all the people that I meet. He has this plan that when I was doing drugs in the kitchen or, … smoking cigarettes or drinking that I would never have imagined for myself until I just surrendered to God so that he could take control over my life so that he could guide me and use me as a tool and point me in the direction that he wanted me to be.

And when I serve God, man, all my anxieties are gone.

There are gods in our life, whether we admit to them being gods or not. And I, I call them lowercase “g” —little “g”— gods, the alcohol god, the god of, of, of sex, the god of gambling, the god of the food addiction, these little “g” gods. Those are the idols in our life that we introduce into our lives that we, …, we are, … worshiping at the altar.

 When I smoke a cigarette, I am giving five minutes of my time at the altar of the smoking god. … when I’m drinking a 6 pack or a 12 pack, I’m giving that time in my evening or morning, depends on how bad of an alcoholic I am, …, to that altar of the beer god, the alcohol god. So God put this ability in me to be addicted to cigarettes and to be addicted to alcohol.

And so when, when I’m boo hooing myself and feeling sorry about my addictions and why, why God did you put this in me to be addicted to alcohol and cigarettes and all these drugs and anger, you know, because I want to make it more relatable to everyone here.

 So again, if it’s not drugs, if it’s not alcohol, there are so many things that we fill our lives with that, we become addicted to it. It’s the thing that we constantly do. It’s the thing that we think about when we wake up in the morning, it’s the thing that we can’t have enough of—that it rules over our life.

I’m not talking about the guy who smokes a cigarette and he’s done. I’m not talking about the guy has one or two beers and he’s done. I’m talking about the guy who has one or two beers wakes up in the morning. He needs more. I’m talking about the guy who smokes a cigarette and then he goes and buys a pack and finishes it.

I’m talking about the person who, you know what, maybe made this perfect and then goes on to make this perfect and make this perfect. And then you know what, they’re here till two in the morning, making everything perfect. I’m talking about the person who just heard about the gossip from over here and then spread more gossip over here and then spread more gossip over there.

Whatever is in control of our lives, that we gave rule over our lives, so that they’re in charge of our lives. Those are the addictions that I said to myself, Why God did you give me this addiction? Why God am I an addict? And God answered me.

 The questions I asked earlier is like, you know, what are you addicted to? Do you let your addiction rule over your life? Do you submit to your addiction? Do you live your life in service to your addiction? And again, you know, who is the master and who is the slave?

 We are made in the image of God and we were not mistakenly given this addiction nature.

 Whatever it is, find something in yourself that you can relate to, that you do constantly. It’s the thing you wake up in the morning thinking about. It’s the thing you’re not happy about until you get done. And think to yourself, is that my addiction? Is that what rules over me? Is my life not complete until I do that thing?

Whatever that thing is. For smokers, I need that morning cigarette fix. For an alcoholic, I’m going to drink at 8 in the morning. Let’s do it.

 But, if we identify ourselves as Christian, if we find our identity in Jesus Christ, do we wake up and we need to read the Bible? Do we wake up and we need to pray?

 However you choose to pray is your business. Whenever you choose to pray, that’s your business too. But if it’s the first thing you feel like doing, if that’s what you crave, if that’s what you desire, if that’s what moves you when you wake up, thank you, God, I’m alive.

You might be addicted to God, which is cool, which is way cool. It’s good to be addicted to God.

 If something rules over your life, it’s not just a little bit of control, it becomes absolute. It’s what, …, it’s what I think about constantly until I finally get it. I don’t have a good day if I don’t talk to God. I don’t have the most fulfilling, most wonderful day, even if I went out and had a good time at the park with my kids and my wife.

If I don’t pray to God, God, please protect us in this park. Please keep us safe. Please keep us healthy and strong. Guide me. Help me not to lose my temper. I’m addicted to anger, by the way.

 These little “g” gods, … they want to take everything that we give them until we wither and we die. We’ll give them our time, we’ll give them our money. We’ll give all of our attention to this little “g” god, this addiction, this idol that we place in our lives. These idols that we were told in the Old Testament, those are part of the Ten Commandments, have no false idols.

 And we put those false idols in charge of us. But we’re asked because God put this in us. He put this addiction in us. He did. He put this addiction in us so that we would be addicted to HIM. He made us in his image. If we are made in God’s image, why am I addicted? God put addiction in me. He’s like, here, you get a little bit of this.

You get a little bit of this. And here’s some addiction. So you can become a God addict. I want you to love me. I want you to adore me. I want you to wake up in the morning craving me. I want you to have to have me. And like fallen people, that’s what we are. We’re fallen people.

 We went and worshiped rocks and stones and we worshiped … things that we made with our hands and then we worship alcohol and we worship drugs. We worship any, codependency addiction that we have or any, any, any drug addiction, sex addiction, you name it. We worship everything under the sky, everything worldly here in this place, except for God. And God’s up there saying, I made you to be addicted to me, but you found everything else except me to worship.

These false idols are not supposed to be in control of our lives. They don’t even have the brains. They don’t have the know how to take care of a human being, to know what we need in life, to know what we desire in life, to make us better people. These little “g” gods, these little idols. They just want to take until we die and we will die.

God wants us to worship him. The BIG “G” God, the Capital “G” God. We’re supposed to wake up in the morning and we’re supposed to pray to him. I don’t care how you pray. If your knees are getting bad, sit down and pray. I don’t care if you haven’t read Scripture before. Start reading Scripture, mark up your Bible, understand who it is that we worship, understand who God is because God is powerful.

If you let him be powerful in your life.

God is the only addiction that we should have. That’s right. … He is faithful. He gives back to us better than anything that we’ve surrendered to him. He … he multiplies the blessings that he gives to us because he’s got a good plan for our lives. His will for our lives is better. His will and his plan is better than our own.

He’s a good God. Just surrender to him, trust in him and life will be good. The thing that I run into in Celebrate Recovery is that’s a huge leap of faith. People don’t understand that they’re already worshiping little “g” gods. They’re already worshiping a lesser power. And one of the 12-Step things that people―that the 12-Step programs ask you to do is to surrender yourself to a higher power, meaning you’ve already surrendered to lower powers.

Get someone who can rule your life, who is able to show you what is good in your life to better you, to make you into a human being that you were supposed to be one that images God that is addicted to God. But, we stumble, we fall.

 It’s okay, you know, just catch ourselves. Repent, have faith in God that he’s going to take care of you and repent from your ways.

 If I’m taking painkillers because of my back pain, I’m smoking cigarettes because I feel anxiety and I drink to relieve the pressure of a hard day because I deserve to unwind and to treat myself.

Maybe it’s just a disease, right? Isn’t that what people say? These addictions are diseases. My food addiction is a disease. My smoking is a disease. My drinking, my alcohol addiction is a disease. That’s a great reason, right? That’s a reason to say, well, I’m going to deflect. I’m going to deny what I am, what I want, what I desire in my heart.

And I’m just going to say, the doctor said it’s a disease, so it’s okay. No, it’s not okay. It’s not okay if we have this thing that’s called a disease. I think it’s just a modern day verbiage for people trying to come up with an explanation to an age old problem. The problem is why do we do these things that we can’t control?

Why do we do these uncontrollable things? Why do I drink when I don’t want to drink? Why do I smoke when I don’t want to smoke? Why do I want to do these things that take and take and take from me, but they never give back to me ever? Ever. I’ve never had a cigarette give me a single good thing. I’ve never had a drink give me a single good thing back to me. It took my money, it took my relationships. It took, it took my respect from my kids for me. These things take and they don’t give. God gives back. God wants to see me be the best man I can be.

We need spiritual redemption. We need healing from our brokenness. We need to be lifted up from our fallen state and we need to be loved ABSOLUTELY. Not judged for the things that we’ve done in the past. I’ve done a lot of them. We can’t keep carrying the junk with us. That’s, that’s the thing. If you feel shame, you’re just going to carry it with you.

God forgave us. He forgave me for the things I already did. The things I’m going to do. He forgave me. I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, but he forgave me. I don’t need to carry that shame with me. It’s too heavy of a burden. We need freedom from the things that hurt us and the habits that we use to fill the void inside of us.

We need to clear it out of us. We need to have a clear path for us from all of the hangups in our life. They just stand in our way. We need that forgiveness that God gives us that we can shake off that shame and we can be WHOLE in our lives because we’re incomplete broken creatures, but we need to submit to a HIGHER POWER. It’s one of the 12-Steps. Don’t submit to lower powers. They don’t know how to take care of human beings. God knows how to take care of human beings. We’re made in his image.

We need to be honest with ourselves and we need to swallow our pride. We need to admit that we already do serve lesser gods. Each one of us, whatever that lesser god is, we already serve lesser gods. I think they’re like little demon gods, little “g” lowercase “g”. We need to embrace the help of God. BIG “G”, the help that he’s been offering to us since the day he created us.

We’re not to have other idols of God, because we are the living idol of God himself. We’re made in his image, and he loves us, and he cares for us, and he pursues us every waking moment. When we are wayward, he seeks us.

When we are, missing, he leaves the 99 to come find us, which is really cool.

 We’re God’s representatives, and he’s asking that we hold ourselves to a higher standard, because he is the highest standard. And we’re not to lower ourselves, cheapen ourselves, lessen ourselves disrespectfully and dishonorably. We are to represent God because we are made to reflect who God is.

 We shouldn’t smell like a brothel if we’re representing God.

We shouldn’t nitpick at people’s imperfections if we represent God. We shouldn’t try to tell other people they need to be perfect when they’re struggling in life because we’re perfectionists. We shouldn’t tell people that… we don’t forgive them because they wronged us because that’s not what God would want.

God forgave us. Because God forgave us, we need to take that forgiveness and forgive other people. I truly believe that when you can forgive others and take the forgiveness that God gave to you, that is when your life begins. Life begins when you forgive others.

Forgiveness is when life begins.

So, God thinks about us all the time. He’s always near and he never leaves us. He has this steadfast love for us. Steadfast love is dependable loyalty.

We are always looking to satisfy our own needs, and all God really wants us to do is to seek him and to pursue him and to serve others―as a way, as a means―to do that. And when we actually serve other people, we’re serving God’s will, and we create this relationship with God that we didn’t have before.

That’s how we serve God―by serving one another. As we serve one another and get to know one another, we get to know what God’s grand plan for us is, and somehow we get to know who God is and we know that he loves us. ALL of us.

What do we crave when we wake up in the morning? A cigarette, a news headline, coffee?

Do we fall our knees and pray? You can sit at the dining table. What do we have to do? And we’re not satisfied until it’s done. If we don’t do it, we’ll be left throughout the day, longing to do it, wanting to do it, feeling like that thing was unfinished in our life.

Well, if you find the thing that you do most habitually. And if you want to avoid that word addiction, the thing that you do over and over again, just look at it for yourself personally and just think to yourself, am I glorifying God when I do this? When I, when I read scripture, am I glorifying God? When I pray, am I glorifying God?

When I spread gossip, am I glorifying God? When I, I don’t want, I don’t want people to get guilt trips, you know, cause there’s, there’s, there’s drinking Christians and then there’s, I don’t want to tell you that I drink. But Jesus did, but does your addiction rule over your life? That’s what makes it an addiction.

I don’t care if you have a beer or two and during the holidays, it’s just whatever. There’s people that have food addictions. And how can you tell if a person with a food addiction relapsed,

You can’t. So what I’m saying is know your heart, know what you desire, know that you’re addicted to energy drinks, know that you’re addicted to cigarettes, know your addictions, know what rules over you.

Ask God to take it from you. And as you ask God to take it from you, you’re praying. And as you read scripture that says you can have God take it from you and that he’s not going to give you challenges You can’t overcome…My favorite life verse when I was just getting over addiction says, 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you. That is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation you will also provide the way of escape that you might be able to endure it.”

So the number one thing, a person who is suffering from true addiction is, WHY did you give this to me, God?

It’s like the finger pointing blame game. Why did you give me this addiction? God’s answer is, “I gave you this ability to be addicted because you’re supposed to be addicted to me. But I realize you’re in a deep hole here and you, you are addicted to energy drinks or beer or cigarettes, and I’m going to give you a way out. Pray to me, read my scripture and you’ll find your way out.”

There’s nothing he puts in our path that tempts us, that we don’t have a way of escaping. There’s nothing that God puts in our way that we cannot overcome. Now, keep in mind, it’s not us that is overcoming our addictions on our own. We put ourselves in that problem on our own. But it is God that gets us out. And so, again, what do you wake up craving in the morning? What do you have to have before your day is complete? Evaluate it. See if it glorifies God.

It’s okay to be an addict, but it’s not okay to, to, to serve lesser gods. Because that’s idolatry.

Be God Addicts.